Hello everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist perspectives.
I am here with Ernest Witmer, and we're in Los Angeles, California.
Ernest, you would have moved here about what, ten years ago, something like that.
Almost exactly.
[You] started a church here. You've been pretty busy last couple of years.
You wrote a book, we'll make sure and link that on this video as well.
Can you just describe some of the process of your calling to Los Angeles,
why you moved your family from Minnesota to here?
Yeah, so I was, I was in Minnesota, my family, Rachel, and I, pastoring a church there in Minnesota.
I received this invitation to join a group of men that were going to Los Angeles
to do some street witnessing, tract distribution.
So [I] thought, "Wow that's a nice little break I'll do that," and went with them.
That would have been in, I believe it would have been about 99, yeah, 1999.
[I] joined 25 men doing that, and we would connect with Ray Comfort in the mornings.
He would come over to our hotel room, and sit on the floor and talk to us about evangelism.
Then we would we would go over in the afternoon to his place and we'd buy up his tracks;
then we'd hit the streets.
I think that week we distributed about 10,000 tracks, 25 of us.
You know, for us to be fishers of men, why, we should probably fish where the men are, right?
Many, many, men and women and children in Los Angeles.
What would it be like to live in a place like this? Just kind of a fanciful dream.
[I] didn't ever imagined that it would be possible for my family and I.
I believe it was the spring of, yeah, the spring of 07, when I was on my
knees praying in our bedroom and the phone rang;
it was John Baumberger, the CEO for Choice Books National Organization.
He introduced himself and said that the board, their board, had met and
someone on their board said I think I know somebody might have a heart for Los Angeles.
So on that basis, Baumberger called me and I said, "Wow! that would be, be amazing."
I don't know how soon we could do something like that, you know, we're busy.
And I'd have to, yeah, I was involved in construction business,
plus we had a senior home care business in our home .
To make a long story short, it was almost exactly a year later,
March 31st of 2008, that God had put everything together.
I sold our house on January 1st of that year. Everything was ready, and we were rolling down the road.
Yeah, almost to the day ten years ago actually. What is today the 12th, yeah. Wow!
That's crazy that it's been that long, because I remember hearing about when
you guys were we're doing this and just thinking, wow, that's just, that's a real
commitment, packing up your family and moving here.
There wasn't any kind of church established at that point or anything.
You kind of walked through some of that process
of getting the church started here, and where is that at today?
How has it grown, and what's the impact today?
We were here for three years without any additional team mate families or staff around us.
So it was it was a bit of a lonely time, especially for Rachel, and for our family, for my boys and our girls.
We didn't initially start doing the house church thing.
We, we've kind of visited some churches around.
Eventually we just started doing, having, Bible studies and fellowship times worship times in our living room.
Soon [we] had a gathering of, oh there would often be thirty or forty.
One of the first years, we were contacted by a church in Mississippi [wondering]
whether we would be interested in them coming out and doing a Vacation Bible School with us.
I remember telling Jim Shrock from Mississippi at the time,
that, you know, I don't personally really have a heart for children ministries.
I love my own five kids and I certainly have a heart for them.
But that really wasn't really my passion.
My passion is more men, marriages, families, that kind of thing.
But I said if you want to come and put it on, we will certainly accommodate you.
They did that, they did one week of Vacation Bible School with us,
and then after that year my oldest son, our oldest son, Marcel came to me and he said,
"You know Dad, I I think we could do that ourselves.
Basically on his initiative, he rallied his friends from SMBI days, and
the next thing we knew, he had twenty five, thirty, young people joining us the next year,
for our first two-week period of EBC, Evening Bible Camps.
Kids ministry wasn't really my passion, but that's what God used to really spearhead
and bring us into contact with our community.
And it's out of that that we learned to know
José and Ana Sanchez, and their family, André, and Richard, and Vanessa.
Eventually they began to attend our fellowship. As you note at this point José is one of our pastors.
Jared and Carmen joined us in 2011 and he had this dream of a thrift store.
So two years ago, he spearheaded the effort to get the thrift store going;
And within six months, I believe it was, we were, we were in the black.
It's been growing ever, ever since.
I said that to say this, that then a year ago, about a year ago, one of the managers there, Andrew Miller,
just had this vision for starting a church in the thrift store.
I think it was June or July of last year eventually when we, they, had their first service.
I was a part of that first service, I believe. Let me just say about the thrift store to,
Jared has maybe mentioned this to you, but it's become not just a place of of transaction,
but just a connection with the community, and that was really his heart.
And he did very well at spreading that passion among the staff there.
And it's become a place where the community just loves to come in and just enjoy the atmosphere.
That's so interesting because some of the people we were talking to at the thrift store,
they were just talking about how, "It's just amazing when we come in here,
just the good vibes, the good feeling."
I was like uh-huh, yeah, that's the Holy Spirit, you know, and it's crazy.
You know, amazing, they can feel that when they walk through the door.
This is kind of broad, but where would you like to see all of this in five years?
You talked about how you came and it was just your family for the first while;
and now it's grown to where you have two churches and all these different ministries.
Clearly God has blessed this; where would you like to see this go?
I always hate that question when people ask me, at the same time I love it; because, there's a very simple answer.
And that is, I want exactly what God wants.
You know I think sometimes we can get busy
with all of our imagining, and dreaming, and planning, and strategy.
Ten years ago I would have found it hard to imagine everything that God is doing here, I really would have
What's something for, for our audience that if they're interested in either moving to LA,
or getting into urban ministry, or just moving to the city.
What's some practical advice you can give them?
Pray, get on your knees and pray. Develop who you are.
Ministry is not so much about doing, it's about being.
Offer your level of emotional health, learn how to work with people, resolve problems.
Come as a healthy person; that's the best thing you can do to prepare.
And I'm guessing you're pretty passionate about urban ministry.
Like why specifically outreach in the cities versus something else?
To me it's pretty obvious; It's where the people are. The church is made up of people.
If you're gonna be fishers of man you need to fish where the men, and women, and children are.
Ministry is not necessarily about "Oh, okay, so I'm gonna
clock out of my job at five o'clock in the evening and then I'll go do ministry."
No. Ministry is who you are. Your life is lived out of the abundance of the heart the life liveth .
You know, if I walk across this room with a cup of coffee
and you bump into me, it's gonna spill out, lemonade?
No, it's gonna be coffee, whatever is in there.
And it's in the context of who we are that God's life
becomes alive and meaningful to those around us.
And people are going to see that a lot more In an urban environment,
I'm guessing, because there's just people [everywhere].
I mean, as y'all can probably hear filming this, there's noise from outside.
There [are] people banging on some; there was people walking like right here--like through your courtyard.
There was kids playing just right over there. There's people just everywhere.
As a general rule, the Anabaptists have been much more of rural type people.
So, I'm guessing that was a pretty big switch for you.
You know, it wasn't it really wasn't that big of a deal from a me, my family and I;
because we were already living in the city of International Falls.
And we were there for a reason, the same reason.
We really don't do, I tell people this many times, we don't do anything out here in
Los Angeles that we weren't doing in International Falls.
But there are people that are even less outgoing than I am, and that's fine. It's wonderful.
Still, God has called you. Not just to give you a nice little home in heaven someday,
but God has called you to be a blessing to other people.
Whatever your gifting is, that's what he's going to use.
Those are the channels that he's gonna use.
Whether it's real noisy and active or a more quiet and underlying; he's gonna use that.
Life is not about me just becoming this pious and perfect beautiful Christian.
It's about impacting others, and drawing others to Christ.
And when I go like this, this is what church is. Churches coming together.
Membership, and there's a lot of debate about is membership a good thing or not, and so forth
Membership is this. Sometimes people think in terms of membership being this.
Oh, we got to, we got to keep certain bad things and bad kinds of people.
That's not what membership [is]. God's designed a membership as this,
"Come here's a body here's people that love you."
What's one step people watching this can take to have more of that mindset,
to, you know, well, specifically [be] urban.
Be alive where you are with whoever you connect with. But yeah make a point of going into your local city.
I'm not necessarily blaming our Mennonite people or conservative kind of people for this;
but I think it can, it can be a problem.
The reason we don't live in the cities: because we're afraid.
We're fearful, we're fearful of the impact of the negative things.
And so we kind of white-knuckle it, and we stay as far away as we can.
Fear is the opposite of faith; God honors faith.
There isn't anything that God loves more than when people simply trust him.
The mindset to, like that's something you're really getting at
is the mindset and the attitude of living in the city.
You are doing it for something much, much, bigger than just for yourself or something like that.
There's some very deliberate steps you want to take by moving here.
I think that's really key.
So what would you say to someone who would be interested in serving out here?
Make sure to check your motives, make sure you're coming for the right reason.
And as I said before, get healthy; even if you're just coming for a year or two.
Start thinking about others rather than yourself. Get busy where you are.
Sometimes we think, well we're gonna come to Los Angeles and we're gonna do ministry.
Well, if you're not doing ministry where you are, you probably not gonna do it out here either.
In other words, if you're self focused and just kind of doing your own thing
making sure you have a good time and enjoying your day,
or your week, or your weekend, that's how you're going to be out here.
We're not interested in that.
Yeah, I mean, you can come out here if you want, but you're not gonna be excited about who we are.
What gives you the best, your best experience in following Jesus?
What really lights your flame? What really creates that bosom enthusiasm for you?
Because, whatever it is is a gift from God, and he wants to develop that.
There maybe nobody else in the world that's doing exactly what you're doing,
and in the way you're imagining it or whatever.
But just just follow your dream, let God be your passion and then just follow that passion.
There will be some people that understand it and maybe even get excited about it.
There might be other people that shake their heads and go, "What? You do that with your life?"
God will steer you. He will tweak your vision so, you know,
don't be upset by that. Just to allow those influences to tweak where you're going.
God can't steer a parked vehicle.
You have to get going, you have to step out and get moving;
then he will steer you.
He'll use people to steer you. Obviously you can't just be a people pleaser,
"Oh sure I'll do that." "Oh I'll do this."
You have to know who you are and you have to have your own passion and vision.
Wow. Well, thank you everyone for listening in on this episode;
and thank you for being willing to do it.
It's exciting that we're able to come all the way to Los Angeles and film some of these.
That's pretty neat. So yeah, come back next week for more content like this.
If you like what you see leave a comment, or shoot us an email.
We'd love to hear from you. We will see you in the next episode.
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